2012 Market Trends, part III

6. Super Healthy“Our intention is to reinvent this category in the same tonality that we have reinvented over the last 40 years the basic commodity of coffee. We see a lot of white space.”
—Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz on the acquisition of Evolution Fresh Inc.

It started with the explosion of Cross Fit. It progressed with the success of health foods stores nationwide. And once coffee juggernaut Starbucks was on the super health bandwagon, “health” as we knew it ceased to exist. Nowadays, simply being healthy and fit is not enough. Today’s goal is to be “super healthy.” Goodbye calorie-portioned microwavable dinners and 30 minutes on the elliptical. Hello vitamin-enriched juices, fortified protein bars, and stretching your body’s limit with cutting edge fitness. The trend of super health is upon us. Extreme fitness has now become the norm rather than the exception. Cross Fit and Tough Mudder have helped shift society’s view of fitness as recreation, to fitness as a lifestyle. Starbucks has even acquiesced to the super health trend with its $30 million dollar purchase of Evolution Fresh, with plans to reinvent the premium juice segment. Whole Foods, once a niche grocer, is now a main player in the super health
movement with fiscal Q4 revenue growing to $2.4 billion, on 31% earnings
growth. 2012 earnings are projected to grow to over $11 billion.What Others Are Saying
• Top 2012 Food Trends
• Tough Mudder: The Future of Grueling Obstacle Event
• Can Starbucks For Juice What it Did for Coffee?

7. Lean and Mean“Increasing pressures on organizations to be more competitive, agile, and customer focused—to be a ‘lean enterprise.’”
—Judith Heerwagen, Ph.D., J.H. Heerwagen & Associates

A fundamental shift has occurred in the marketplace. The initial change stemmed from the volatile economy. The recession setback even the most stable of firms and overpowered giant enterprises. The unexpected downturn forced many companies to rethink, redesign and reposition themselves. Companies are now turned toward “lean” endeavors—constantly trimming fat where they see fit. Starbucks contributed to this lean movement, cutting close to 7,000 jobs and closing 300 stores in the past few years. Also, according to Bloomberg, companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 generated free cash flow over the past 12 months of $883.4 billion, 119% more than in 2006. This excess of cash demonstrates that firms recognize they can no longer afford to waste neither time nor money. Today’s lean organizations are more agile. They can react to change fast and keep up with the ever-dynamic marketplace. This is key to remaining competitive. Consumer perception can shift on a dime; therefore, companies today have to be able to keep up.What Others Are Saying
• Simplification of Lean
• A New Way to Teach Entrepreneurship
• The Changing Nature of Organizations

8. Green Revolution“This is a great development—an indication that leading businesses are beginning to define their roles as true stakeholders in the future of our planet.”
—Jens Martin Skibsted, founding partner of KiBiSi, a product design consultancy, and Rasmus Bech Hansen, director at Venturethree, a global brand consultancy

They’re starting a revolution. And no, there are no radical protests or occupying of any main streets. The revolution is a green one, an eco-friendly one if you will. Businesses—large and small, national and worldwide—are starting a revolution of sustainability. We’re not talking a few feel-good green initiatives, but green company initiatives, that will ultimately better the earth as we know it. The best way to create educated consumers is to lead by example, and that is exactly what a number of corporations are doing. PepsiCo recently donated $8 million to Water.org to provide 800,000 families in India safe water by 2016. AT&T recently offered $20k for its “Power Your Future” contest to create an eco-minded mobile app that delivers an environmental or energy efficient benefit. We’re seeing an ongoing trend of companies bettering the world, not just their country or even company, and helping to build sustainable societies. Welcome to the evolution of “Green” into the foundation of corporations.What Others Are Saying
• US Airlines Getting Greener as Biofuels Rule the Air
• Why Standardized Rules About Sustainability Don’t Make Sense
• The 7-Stage Evolution of a Socially Responsible Brand

9. Seeing is Believing“…The resume infographic is a trend that foreshadows the future because one thing is certain: the way we consume data is changing, fast.”
—Jen Jenkins, founder of the Punctuation and Language Appreciation Society & Social Media Manager for LIME Marketing

We live in a skeptic nation. Nowadays, distrust towards news organizations, the government and big business are at all time highs. With shorter attention spans and a need for instant gratification, an infographic movement has transformed the way we take in data. Today, a picture is truly worth a thousand words—as the public generally trusts photos and visual representations more than the written word. We are also in an age of engagement. Words on a page do little to engage a reader. A visual graphic, however, does. Retail giant Saks has taken this train of thought into their holiday displays by creating the world’s longest outdoor video mapping experience with “The Saks Fifth Avenue Snowflake & the Bubble” projected onto their New York store. Even resumes have taken to the infographic trend. Images engage and captivate an audience. But it doesn’t stop there; the future of infographics is boundless. Many believe HTML5 will create interactive-rich creative, others reason real-time data visualization will come into play; and there are also those who presume user-interface design will once again transform the infographic trend.What Others Are Saying
• 3 Trends that Will Define Infographic Future
• Saks 3D Holiday Display
• Content Marketing to the Next Level

Check back for the rest of the 12 Trends of 2012 next week…

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